She wanted to embrace the girl. Do something.
The man stood beside her. “Stavon is genius. To think that you could link a person to a body by using their own energy harmonics. The man has no limits. And he’s given that gift to his clients. It’s an honor to work for him.”
She felt the weight of her heart fall to her stomach. Her breath labored. She sighed. “Thank you for allowing me to join you. I must keep myself abreast of it. And seeing it is the best study of all.” She left the room without allowing her eyes to wander.
She paced the hallway, running her hands along the cool, smooth stone surface of the walls to brace herself. After following along a few turns, she came upon a nondescript door.
She entered the room. A vat stood at the center. In it was the body of a man suspended in a soupy fluid. A jet at the base circulated a cloud of some substance. The man’s arms bobbed in the erratic current. She looked closer and realized that it was the limping man she had just seen as a client. This was an unoccupied clone of him, a mere shell of a body, much like the body in the room she had just left. The man was now in his avatar on Meno.
A tube entered a mask over the man’s nose and mouth. Tape spanned his eyelids. A monitor overhead showed the image of a fully-grown man next to what looked like a representation of the man in stasis. A clone was in progress. She felt the wrongness of him.
She backed against the wall as she passed by, as if she were in a haunted house where the figures could, just might, grab a passerby into their world. Once clear of him, she turned her attention to the other side of the room, where stood another door. She saw a pile of folded sheets on a shelf near the door and rushed to it. She slipped the communicator Stavon had given her under the stack.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw an emanator on a shelf below. She took hold of it and lifted the orb from its base to expose the mechanism inside. An old combination-style lock, like those on Earth. This entry was clean, not yet set. Holan must have not yet decided when and where another soul would be uprooted and planted into another vessel of sorts, if one was ever in a vessel to begin with. She glanced back at the man in the vat, wondering who the orb was meant for. This man’s aura was with the device she had just witnessed. She remembered the scientist’s words about Holan sourcing new participants. She shook off that thought as unbearable for the moment and carefully replaced the globe on its base and set the ensemble back on the shelf.
She cracked the door open and peered into another hallway. Three men traversed another passage at one end. She followed them until they disappeared into a main area. She located a concrete and steel stairwell and went to a lower level, following the clanking noise of heavy equipment. The steps were well-worn, an indicator that she needed to hurry to avoid a well-traveled route. Rivner wouldn’t have frequented this place, she guessed. And so extra care was needed to not be discovered. She emerged into a warehouse and peered out to where workers busied themselves with their routines.
She went the other way down the hall. A sign that read Participants displayed above her as a hologram arrow turned down a narrower direction. She followed it and saw openings to what looked like seating pods. She realized that the shape of the interior was rounded like the sphere-shaped shuttle she saw on the display minutes ago. Each seat had a harness like those of a carnival ride on Earth. Yet, she noticed the same netting of wires over each position. She tore her attention from it and continued down the bank of pods. One such opening had been closed off. Heat radiated from its hatch. That pod had just launched.
She continued on and passed by an area with open shelving holding participant uniforms. Undoubtedly, they would don them before boarding the shuttle. She ventured into another room and spied a person leaving through the other side. She recognized this room as the one where Ferli had her give her send-off to the participants. And where she’d made the girl cry. Meno was such a far-off place for one so young. Margi should have understood, being so far from home herself. The girl would remain on Meno. Margi had to reconcile herself with the fact that her own fate might be a similar new life on Danu.
She kept to the main corridor as it opened to another warehouse of some kind. She darted behind pallets of supplies and searched for a new direction. The building spanned city blocks. She had lost track of how far she had wandered from the exam room. Without any windows to offer a wider view to the outside, she could only meander through the maze of venues to its end. Seeing another door, she snuck through it to yet another room.
Piles of worn and soiled white uniforms with black stripes like those worn by the participants in line for Meno lay in open canvas laundry sacks. The sight didn’t make sense to her. The participants would wear them to Meno. They would not need to be returned.
A loud noise came from nearby as if cargo had been dropped. The siren of a forklift grew distant.
She knelt low and cracked open a nearby door. Seeing no one inside, she slipped in and rose to her feet.
The sight of what she saw caused her knees to buckle. She scrambled against the wall, unable to take her eyes off the sight that now gripped her. Beyond more piles of soiled uniforms in laundry baskets lay dead bodies stacked atop one another. Too many bodies where none should have been.
Some lay with eyes open, stiff limbs cockeyed as arms reached to others in a macabre dance, entwined with torsos and limbs mingling. It was as if the bodies themselves were attempting to live beyond their scope of existence. She felt as if she had invaded a private moment. No personal space was heeded among the dead, especially in the presence of the living.
Thoughts tore through her mind leaving destruction in every corner. The participants weren’t supposed to be here, she kept telling herself. They were supposed to be on Meno, staying there for service. The bodies were clothed in various garb and bore the old age of a life spent, she reckoned, from the accelerated time on Meno. She might have even met some of them in line her second day on Danu.
Realization flooded what was left of her senses. Their service was to be the avatars, the virtual realities for others, representing the opportunity of a vacation life as someone else. She couldn’t deny what she had somehow known all along, in fact had been all but told outright. Their Paths were not kept, could not be kept. Holan had not yet discovered the technology.
What was she then? A client? A participant? Where was Rivner? She was a client. Possibly not now. Margi had assumed her body. Holan had her assumption code on Earth and so could do as he wished.
Her chest heaved as if it were about to explode, her eyes too struck to cry. She crawled to the door, reached for the handle. Her fingers shook too much to grip and fell away to slap against the door. She centered her nerves to try again.
Her hand turned the latch, and her arm slid into the gap to the next room. She followed her arm through that sliver into another space and collapsed onto the floor. The door closed with a click. The sound caught her, and in that moment the scene from the other room shut, too. But not for long. Nothing could shut out such evil.
Margi felt her stomach lurching to rid itself of the vileness of death. She braced herself against the side of a laundry basket, lifting herself upright, and vomited onto the uniforms inside. At that moment, she was sorry. Sorry for every bad thought and act she had ever conceived in her life. Sorry for others, sorry for mankind and every creature dead or alive anywhere, even the holograms that stole the streets. She was sorry for anyone having to endure.
She collapsed against the cold, hard floor, hidden between the containers that bulged with the weight of uniforms. Like grave markers, the uniforms demanded to be counted as they poked against the sack canvas, each one seeming to move, to call attention to itself. Yet already dead were the souls that were to steward bodies safely through one lifetime on Danu. Each had sacrificed his own life for another’s enjoyment by submitting as a participant.
Drool hung from her lip. “I’m sorry,” she said and hid her face in her hands.
She stayed for several m
inutes, summoning the courage to remove herself, lest she be discovered. She was Rivner, wife of Stavon the Great, and many of the workers might relish her visit, but not with makeup smeared with snot on a repentant face. The break in facade would be a chasm in the fortress of DanuVitro at its highest echelon and an opened curtain to who she really was—Margi, a reluctant castaway to a reality that was foreign in so many ways she couldn’t summon the wherewithal to define them.
She stood and wiped her palms across her cheeks and came away with mascara. She took hold of a clean portion of a uniform and wiped her eyes until no more smeared off and buried the garment under the others. “Sorry,” she said again.
With the horror still a mere wall away, she turned away from it all and reemerged into the larger warehouse, less concerned of being discovered. She felt too spent to acknowledge the risk of exposure. As workers orchestrated their efforts in the far section, she traced her steps away from them, behind the pallets, and entered the stairwell. She reached the stairs and ascended, gripping the rail to brace herself. She stopped at the platform and stood tall before entering the hallway, walking briskly to the room with the clone, having lost her direction only one time in getting there.
Once inside, she rushed to the opposite door, putting as much distance between her and the clone as possible. She grabbed the handle and stopped, then darted to the shelves, retrieved her communicator and made her way out.
A commotion came from a congregation of people, their numbers growing as light spilled into the aisle way. She boarded the elevator and descended further away from the highest echelons of DanuVitro. She merged into the thoroughfare of the crowd and kept pace until she saw a bathroom. She dropped out of line and entered the bright room, instinctively lowering her gaze. A few women stared but said nothing.
Margi dared look into the mirror and faced the image gazing back at her—a wretch by any standard, with a mask of mascara smeared across her temples. She wet a towel with bubbles and washed her face clean of residue.
She emerged and fell in with the crowd as she headed toward the elevators again. She diverged to join a thinning group and stood with them as they boarded the elevator cabin and descended. A glance that she dared not meet caught her eye and she stared at the floor. The elevators began to wear on her nerves and she longed for a hover car to simply take her to each floor as Stavon probably did.
They landed at street level. Margi emerged into the daylight and took in her surroundings before proceeding. An occasional cloud passed overhead. They looked like a different kind of thing than the clouds she would otherwise peer down through, living high above them. They now looked like solid masses that cast shadows before her as she spotted the structure in the distance that housed the penthouse.
She supposed that the structure was farther than she anticipated, given the size of it, but it offered the impression that it was closer, appearing to tower over her. She felt closed in somehow and resigned herself to the journey home.
A hover car glided beside her as she walked. She stopped, in part from startling, part longing for the company of another.
“Rivner, may I take you to your quarters?” the driver asked.
Margi turned to him. Her feet were already sore from the boardwalk with its surface having crumbled under the weight of those long before her. She hadn’t looked down in fear of what she might see. The driver was very matter-of-fact in his invitation. She hoped that he wouldn’t drive her to slaughter, though she felt he should.
“Thank you,” she said and wearily boarded the car without waiting for the man to open the door for her.
He angled the car gently upward as they crossed the streams of traffic to merge into a higher lane. The fabric of her seat was ragged at the seams. It was an older model, the same as she had ridden in with Tolman. Exactly the same. She looked at the man. He smiled back but kept his eyes on her a second too long. She grinned politely and looked out the side window. He was with Tolman somehow, but she had nothing to say. Better to keep silent. She didn’t know what any given person knew of her or anything else.
They arrived on Stavon’s landing pad. Margi exited as gracefully quick as she could, and as she turned to ask the man how she should pay him, he nodded and swooped into the sky. The traffic absorbed him in the mix. She didn’t have the personal fortitude to wonder about the danger that could have happened but didn’t, and that was good enough for the moment.
She looked inside the penthouse and saw no one. She touched the graphic on the console and the door opened. She sighed in relief and instantly accepted the exhaustion that her body could now afford.
Flowers sat on the kitchen counter. A handwritten scroll read, Rivner, my love, I will see you by daybreak. For now, I must confer on corporate affairs through this night. Your love, Stavon.
The note made her hate him for it, as well as herself. A handwritten love letter from a youthful Renaissance executive man. She smelled the flowers and their intoxicating scent. If only they could have been from another and to her real self—not the wife Stavon thought she was. For a moment she pretended that he didn’t know of the bodies and that she would tell him. She squeezed her eyes shut to erase the thought from her mind.
Another scroll lay nearby. She unfurled it and saw the salutation before she began. From Ferli. The girl had tried to contact her and didn’t get a reply. It must have occurred after she’d hidden the communicator, while she was discovering the bodies. Ferli didn’t say why she was attempting to reach her, indicating that the inability to establish contact was more important than the reason for doing so. She wondered if there was truly a way to fire the girl, but she didn’t have much energy for thought. She slipped off her shoes and hobbled to the shower.
She emerged from the bubbles that always refreshed her mood and entered the main living space, wrapping her robe around her in comfort. The horizon cast cobalt as the sun set to the backside of the structure. She stepped onto the balcony and felt the breeze lift her wet hair from her shoulders as she reached the edge. The energy barrier pressed upon her hips as she braced against it. She didn’t care if it gave way.
Traffic kept its flow like New York City’s call to the night, bringing a personal familiarity to Danu that was not welcome. They didn’t know. Or did they and not care? She knew and cared, but not of her part in it. She had no options. She turned her back to retreat into the space.
Margi took a prepared meal from a heated keeper and ate it standing at the counter, away from Stavon’s flowers, and gazed into nothingness. She let the breeze fill the room. It was neither warm nor cool, and she didn’t care.
Her thoughts went to the bodies and a wave of nausea swept through her. She tossed her meal in the trash and crawled into bed. She didn’t want to be on Danu anymore, nor conduct her exposé. She wanted to go home. That is if she had a body to return to. She closed her eyes possibly for the last time and slept.
* * *
Stavon rose from his chair and stood by the viewer displaying Holan’s report. “Three client Paths are on Earth,” he said.
“Yes, one died,” Holan explained.
“We need more,” Loz interjected.
Holan glared at Loz. “I don’t have the resources there that we have on Danu. I am running a new venture with no funds. The technology is different there. Three is enough for now.”
“With one dead,” Loz noted.
“I’m looking into it.” Holan turned away.
“Get three more,” Stavon said. “Our participants are down by twelve percent.”
“Have Rivner conduct another campaign,” Holan countered.
“She’ll do no such thing.” Stavon paced. “I’ll not have her cover for your lack of will.”
Holan’s mouth moved as if he wanted to reply but didn’t.
“Are their Paths stable?” Stavon asked.
“They are,” Holan replied, but his demeanor said otherwise.
Stavon did not inquire further. “Very well. We all know what to do. Now,
do it.” As Loz and Holan rose, Stavon added. “Loz, stay here.”
Holan paused.
Stavon peered through the window wall at the darkening sky.
Holan continued on and disappeared down the corridor.
“How many?” Stavon asked Loz.
“He has two more, but they are humans as clients,” Loz replied, then added, “Their Paths are unstable.”
Stavon’s face grew red with anger. “Clients? He’s supposed to get participants. Who did they assume?”
Loz displayed images from his device. “Our clients were thought to have succeeded in their return assumption from Meno. Apparently, they were intercepted by Holan’s clients from Earth.”
“Collect his work.” He exhaled. “And shut down all Paths he did not account for.”
“He would suspect,” Loz added.
“First, arrange for them as participants. The human interlopers inside them were intended for that anyway. I don’t care how much the client has invested in us.” Stavon sat at the head of the conference table.
“Understood,” Loz replied.
“Except for the woman. Send her to Meno with another participant and return Rivner back to her own body.”
Loz lowered his gaze. “We no longer have Rivner’s Path.”
Stavon approached the viewer again and brought up Rivner’s profile.
A photo of Rivner appeared alongside a list of her Great Adventures and a section now empty where her Path should have been logged.
Stavon leaned toward the viewer. “You gave her a follow-up examination today.” He turned to Loz with a suspicious gaze.
“I did not.” Loz rose to examine the viewer. “It was not me.”
“Who gave her the exam then?”
“I don’t know” was all Loz could say.
Stavon went to another portion of the screen and tapped on a graphic. He read the text. “She went to Kalgare section yesterday with a man.”
The Assumption Code Page 8